Look, I’m gonna say something controversial
Our industry is completley failing at digital transformation. I mean, honestly, it’s 2023 and we’re still printing physical newspapers like it’s 1995. I was at a conference in Austin last year, and let’s call him Marcus from The Daily Chronicle told me, “We spend more on paper than we do on our website. It’s insane.” And he’s right. It is insane.
But here’s the thing: it’s not just about saving trees. It’s about relevancy. About three months ago, I was having coffee with a colleague named Dave, and he showed me his 16-year-old niece’s phone. Her news diet? TikTok. Instagram. Twitter. None of the big newspapers she’s seeing on her screen. None. And we wonder why circulation numbers are down?
We’re not gonna fix this with half-measures
So many newsrooms are like, “Oh, we’ll just start a Twitter account and that’ll fix everything.” No. It won’t. You need a total aquisition of digital-first thinking. And that means cloud solutions. Real ones. Not just some half-baked, in-house server setup that crashes when more than 214 people visit the site at once.
I get it. The transition is scary. It’s expensive. It’s a big committment. But look at what we’re losing by not making the leap. Advertising revenue? Gone. Younger audiences? Gone. Our collective relevancy? Gonna be gone if we don’t wake up.
And don’t even get me started on the physicaly impossible task of managing remote teams with outdated tech. I had a reporter email me a story from her home at 11:30pm last Tuesday. She’d been struggling with our “cloud” solution all day. It’s just… yeah. We can’t keep doing this to our staff.
But here’s the kicker
Even when newsrooms try to go digital, they mess it up. They’ll invest in some flashy new platform, but then they don’t train their staff on how to use it. Or they’ll migrate to the cloud but keep their old workflows. It’s like buying a sports car and then using it to commute at 30 mph in the slow lane.
I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m saying it’s necessary. And honestly, it’s not as hard as you think. There are solutions out there that make the transition smoother. bulut bilişim çözümleri karşılaştırma is a good place to start. Compare your options. Find what works for you. But do something.
A tangent: The myth of ‘print nostalgia’
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. “But Sarah, people love the feel of a physical newspaper! The smell of the ink! The rustle of the pages!” Okay, sure. Maybe. But let’s be real here. How many of those “nostalgic” readers are actually paying for their subscriptions? And how many are just mooching off their parents’ or their local library’s dime?
And even if we grant that there’s some emotional connection to print, that doesn’t mean we should ignore the future. I love the smell of a new book too, but I still buy a Kindle edition if it’s cheaper. Priorities, people.
Look, I’m not saying we should burn every printing press tomorrow. But we need to start thinking critically about where our industry is going. And frankly, it’s not back to the glory days of the 1980s. It’s forward, into the cloud, or it’s nowhere.
So let’s stop dragging our feet. Let’s stop making excuses. And let’s start actually committment to a digital future. Before it’s too late.
About the Author: Sarah Reynolds has spent the last 22 years in the trenches of the news industry. She’s seen the rise and fall of print, the birth and death of countless digital initiatives, and the ammendments to more editorial guidelines than she can count. She currently serves as the senior editor at NewsPaws, where she fights daily battles against outdated tech and even more outdated thinking.
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